DIY Murphy Bed: Stylish & Functional Guest Space Solution

I think we can all agree that beyond being functional, building a DIY Murphy bed is just plain cool. Do I feel like a bad bitch when I pull the handles down and a whole damn bed appears? Yes I do. And is it super functional space-saving furniture? Absolutely. My two favorite things.

Here’s the Murphy bed kit we used.

When we moved into our house a few months ago with a new baby on the way, we knew from the outset that we couldn’t have a full-blown guest room but still needed a space for our weary travelers to stay when they made the long trek from across the country (or across the world) to visit us.

We built this DIY Murphy bed in the bonus room off our living room and it’s been the perfect addition to a wall we otherwise weren’t really sure what to do with. It’s part of an overarching plan to turn that bonus room into, wait for it, a playroom/office/gym/guest room/laundry – it’s got a lot of duties.

We started with a DIY Murphy bed kit (in the Queen vertical size). We didn’t have the time or the patience to be out there figuring out how to build a Murphy bed on our own so this kit was an absolute lifesaver. I will say, it was very intimidating to get started with the multiple booklets of instructions that reiterate how important it is to get measurements and cuts right, but it’s one of those things we just jumped in and started and it really wasn’t that bad once we got going.

I would say it’s definitely not a beginner project (if not for the more advanced cutting and hardware skills needed, then for the range of tools required that most beginners probably don’t have on hand) but if you’re handy and have a decent workshop then it’s totally doable!

DIY Murphy bed tutorial

Moving a door and getting started

We won’t go into much detail on the how-to of the build because it really is all covered in the kit we purchased, but I absolutely will instead bombard you with photos of this process and the finished bed.

We ended up moving the doorway between the bonus room and the laundry to the left by about three feet to accommodate the width of the DIY Murphy bed which was fairly simple given it’s not a load bearing wall (just a matter of adding a support stud into the middle of the existing doorway and framing out a space for the new one).

We covered the whole wall in a few panels of faux shiplap which essentially acted to clean up the wall and allow us to avoid drywalling, and then attached the Murphy bed structure into the studs.

Adding built-ins

We decided to build around the Murphy bed with some skinny 12” upper kitchen cabinets, some leftover butcher block, and some scrap plywood to make built-in shelves flanking the whole structure. That worked to make the bed look more custom and built-in, plus take up enough room on that wall that it became a real focal point in the room.

We added some simple board and batten-style trim to the blank front panels of the bed to give it some visual interest and cleaned everything up with some caulk and wood filler.

Some bold green paint

The last (albeit tedious) step was to paint the whole thing. Painting shiplap is a pain, painting bookshelves is a pain, and painting molding is a pain so basically the whole finishing steps process was drawn out and dreaded but so worth it in the end.

The Murphy bed kit did tell me to paint all the individual pieces of the bed before assembling it and adding it to the wall but did I listen? No, so I probably deserve the difficulty of figuring out how to paint both the inside and outside of the bed and in all the nooks and crannies (honestly the hardest part was sheepishly standing on the bed I’d just built and hoping it didn’t crumble beneath me).

Anyway, we used the color Laurel Garland by Behr and it is the perfect moody sophisticated green color without being too bright and bold or too dark. We went with a satin sheen which is easier to wipe clean if needed, though evidently makes it kind of difficult to get a true color read in photos.

In the end we’re so happy with how this DIY Murphy bed turned out and we’re so excited for our first guests to arrive this week to enjoy it! And while we love family visiting, I’m also a little excited for them to leave so I can tuck the bed nicely back away and note how much space we’re saving.

We talked a lot more about this DIY Murphy bed process day-to-day in Instagram stories so make sure you’re following along there for our future DIYs, and sign up to our newsletter for more fun projects.